Our Core Values define our culture and who we truly are. They are intrinsic traits and qualities embedded into what we do – and we are passionate about building a culture of people around them, to ultimately ensure Reed Professional Services is a great place to work and ensure that our clients see these values reflected in the work that we deliver.

RPS Values

Alongside our core values, we have a strong commitment to social value. Our founder, Sir Alec Reed, was knighted in recognition of his entrepreneurial and philanthropic work and his commitment to social causes continues to run through our organisation.

18% of profits are invested in charitable causes, via The Reed Foundation, and we are proud to say we work one day a week for charity. The Foundation has donated over £10 million to charitable causes and provided seed funding for organisations including Womankind, Ethiopiaid, Women at Risk and The Big Give.

We’ve helped raise £100 million for over 1,150 charities through The Big Give.

• We’ve made a number of environmental commitments to best respond to the COP26 climate summit
• Our sister company, Reed in Partnership, has helped over 150,000 people return to employment through training and skills programmes
• Every month, 12,000 people improve their skills and their prospects by enrolling on a course through Reed
• We are Carbon Neutral, Disability Confident, a Mindful Employer, a signatory to the Race at Work Charter, a signatory to the Mental Health at Work Commitment and a Stonewall Champion.

Our chairman, James Reed, co-founded the Keep Britain Working campaign, in response to the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on employment. The campaign preserves jobs and protects livelihoods through providing support through resources, upskilling and redeployment to both employers and job seekers.

Over the last 13 months, Reed have been instrumental in pushing forward the modernisation and digitalisation of Right to Work checks. Initially proposed as a solution to the “work from home” mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic, Reed have campaigned to make this change permanent and secure and have since co-authored the Parliamentary Digital Right to Work Inquiry alongside MPs, have spoken at numerous Parliamentary events over the last 12 months, delivered three Parliamentary Questions that have been asked in both Houses, and submitted by request, a briefing to Number 10. This change will be fundamental in increasing time to recruit; directly impacting how quickly a new hire can be on-site and contributing to project delivery.

Tackling economic inequality

Our preference is to appoint resources that exist within the current RPS talent pool, given their existing knowledge of our processes and systems. When/if we go to market to recruit complimentary skills, we’ll apply the following processes to attract Consultants from all backgrounds:

Embed diversity criteria into operational and strategic workforce planning to ensure inclusivity is a key focus of our internal recruitment campaigns

Advertise roles via channels proven to attract a diverse audience

Make offer decisions against defined criteria

• Apply our market intelligence software to identify areas of high unemployment and economic inequality, enabling us to create targeted, localised internal attraction campaigns to best engage with underrepresented groups
• Provide ongoing training to our internal stakeholders (both our internal talent teams and your account management personnel) to help drive inclusive recruitment practices
• Promote our commitment to inclusivity in all advertising and promotional content, including our Stonewall, Disability Confident and Mindful Employer accreditations and the fact we have been ranked in the Financial Times most inclusive companies, as ranked by employees
• Work with local job centre partners to identify suitable candidates and provide necessary training to support their application and onboarding

Work with representatives from the Keep Britain Working Campaign, founded by our Chairman James Reed, we will engage with the campaign to offer opportunities to those who have faced difficulties in employment because of the pandemic. A key element of this can be to ensure that candidates are local residents to ensure a direct positive impact on the local economy, or to offer roles to candidates in disadvantaged geographical areas where remote working can be utilised.

Work with our Apprenticeship scheme to create opportunities for lower skilled roles to be fulfilled by apprentices; both within the project team and our own internal delivery team. As part of our commitment to our client, we would take on the risk of these apprentices, and closely manage the quality of the service provided; ensuring they have exposure to learn new skills and develop existing ones.

• Provide all workers with a comprehensive induction prior to placement and refresher training throughout their employment
• Encourage diverse shortlists and introduce initiatives such as blind CVs to prevent unconscious bias
• Implement, where possible, the ‘Rooney Rule’, mandating that at least one minority candidate must be interviewed for senior roles.
• Conduct exit interviews with all departing staff to identify improvements that can be fed into our internal recruitment management processes
• Provide employees with access to a Professional Development Fund that provides money towards qualifications and courses to aid both their careers and personal lives
• Run monthly wellness initiatives, ranging from mental health awareness to healthy eating, and sharing informative posts from wellness experts.
• Conduct monthly performance reviews and annual performance appraisals with workers to discuss any issues, grievances, career aspirations, challenges, feedback and set performance targets.

In addition to the above recruitment processes, we will provide training opportunities to consultants; and where applicable sponsor the course costs to reduce skill shortages in certain areas. Every month, 12,000 people improve their skills and their prospects by enrolling on a course through our learning division, Reed Courses. Many of these courses are discounted, allowing people to actively access new skills via a recognised training scheme.

Where feasible, we engage local SME agencies to deliver elements of the contract. Our commitment to engaging SME agencies can be evidenced through the fact that 74% of our supply panel comprises of SMEs, with a current spend over £4.3m in the last FY. We are committed to continuing to engage SMEs through this contract, with a particular focus on building diverse, regional supply chains to drive local business and economy.

We use a Professional Services Automation (PSA) tool to manage our end-to-end processes for project delivery. Automated workflows allow us to proactively manage and track progress and financials throughout the project lifecycle; ensuring that we continue to deliver a high-quality experience for our customers, stakeholders, and suppliers. The automation of processes allows us to keep our internal delivery team lean, allowing us to reduce our operating costs and pass on savings to our customers. In addition to this, we utilise e-sign technology to manage our contract process; both with our suppliers and customers. This allows us to track the status of contracts in real-time, increases efficiency and deployment times, enhances security, and reduces paper wastage.

Over the last 13 months, Reed have been instrumental in pushing forward the modernisation and digitalisation of Right to Work checks. Initially proposed as a solution to the “work from home” mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic, Reed have campaigned to make this change permanent and secure and have since co-authored the Parliamentary Digital Right to Work Inquiry alongside MPs, have spoken at numerous Parliamentary events over the last 12 months, delivered three Parliamentary Questions that have been asked in both Houses, and submitted by request, a briefing to Number 10. This change will be fundamental in increasing time to recruit; directly impacting how quickly a new hire can be on-site and contributing to project delivery.

Reed Professional Services is Cyber Essentials certified, allowing us to identify and manage cyber security risks in the delivery of this contract and with our supply chain.

Reed’s company purpose is improving lives through work. We fundamentally believe being a champion of the environment lies at the very heart of our purpose.

One of our values is “we take ownership”. This value is as true about our approach to the environment as it is in the day to day running of our business. It’s what drove us to be CarbonNeutral® back in 2005. We were the first major UK recruitment company to do so.

Taking positive action will not just affect our impact on the climate but makes economic sense too. Maximising efficiency in our consumption and reducing our waste will have a net benefit on our business’s bottom line.

In January 2020 we updated our environmental policy and made three pledges which we will commit to:

• Make year on year reductions in our carbon emissions and maintain our CarbonNeutral® status, by:

• Reducing unnecessary travel
• Energy Efficient offices
• Energy contacts
• Carbon offsetting
• Make year on year reductions in our waste

• Philosophy: Reed aims to minimise its use of resources through the “Reduce, Re-use and Recycle” philosophy
• Recycling
• Asset disposal
• Digital solutions
• Printing efficiency

• Eliminate single use plastics
• Define: Plastic items that are only intended to be used for a short period of time, generally only once, before they are disposed of either into landfill or recycling e.g. plastic bags, straws, coffee stirrers, water bottles.
• Introduce the 5 Ps: We will ensure each of the Reed businesses introduces the 5 Ps taken from lessplastic.org.uk
• Engage Co-Members: We will ensure that co-members are empowered to take action on reducing their own plastic usage.

We will achieve these commitments through enabling a network of Environmental Champions across the Reed Group. An Environmental Champion is a designated co-member who champions our environmental policy and advocates for the adoption of environmental commitments in their relevant sites. They will be a key source of ideas and energy to make the necessary changes required to meet our environmental commitments.

We have nominated Environmental Champions in each site across the business. Our champions will help us to reach our targets and implement positive behaviours towards the environment.

We hope to employ what influence we have as a purchasing organisation to encourage good environmental practice in the wider business community and to this end we require all potential suppliers and contractors to provide evidence of a written Environmental Policy and ISO 14001 Certification, if applicable. We also require all potential suppliers and contractors wishing to do business with us to demonstrate how they implement their Environmental Policy in relation to their own sourcing policies, processes and with regard to subcontractors.

We have taken guidance from the Environment Agency and reviewed our procurement procedures to ensure that environmental sustainability is embedded in all processes.

The majority of products used by Reed, including documents for clients and candidates, are printed on recycled paper. For all promotions, environmentally friendly items are always considered as the first option. A range of digital marketing campaigns, accounts and websites are used to reduce paper stock and the potential for waste.

We utilise e-sign technology to manage our contract process; both with our suppliers and customers. This allows us to track the status of contracts in real-time, increases efficiency and deployment times, enhances security, and reduces paper wastage.

As a business, we are committed to delivering social inclusion and equal opportunities in the way we operate and deliver projects and are proud to state we are:

• A Disability Confident Leader
• A signatory to the Race at Work Charter
• A Mindful Employer
• A signatory to the Tech She Can Charter

We are committed to providing our clients with a consultant pool that best reflects the diversity of the UK population. As a signatory to the Race at Work Charter, with Disability Confident and Mindful Employer accreditations, we will ensure our recruitment practices always embody diversity and equality best practice. As standard practice, we:

• Optimise diverse attraction channels: A key element of any attraction strategy is ensuring opportunities are promoted to a wide audience and that minority groups have equal opportunity to apply. We therefore advertise via a range of channels proven to attract a diverse audience.
• Review job advertisements and descriptions: Commonly used phrases including “team player” or “excellent interpersonal skills” can exclude individuals who will feel that they do not fit this description and may assume the role is not for them. We therefore use inclusive language and carefully consider what is essential and desirable skills for roles. We also incorporate a diversity statement at the end of our job adverts to demonstrate that Reed is an equal opportunities employer and support applications from all. During the process, we also highlight our status as a Mindful Employer, our Disability Confident accreditation, and that we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria. Where possible, based on the role requirements, we advertise each role with the tagline “happy to talk flexible working” to encourage those with disabilities or parental or caring responsibilities who have previously left the workforce to apply for the role.
• Remove names and other identifying factors from CVs during the assessment process to reduce the risk of bias / unconscious bias.
• Provide an accessible application processes: We will provide full, clear, instructions on how to complete application forms to support those with disabilities. We will also include a section within applications to allow applicants to add information about any extra support they may require, either within the application process or to carry out the role.
• Make reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process: To make prospective consultants feel as comfortable as possible, we will offer reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process and provide clear details regarding interviews, including dates, times, and the make-up of interview panels. If required, we will also send candidates the questions that will form their interview to allow preparation. We will also provide guaranteed interviews for applicants that meet defined role criteria, provide additional time for assessments if required (for example, for dyslexia) and ensure interview locations are easily accessible for people with restricted mobility.
• Monitor diversity: At each stage of the process, we will monitor the diversity of the candidate population to ensure that our practices are fair and inclusive.

We are signatories to the Mental Health at Work Commitment and an accredited Mindful Employer. We’ve embedded the Mental Health at Work Commitment six standards in the way we operate, committing to prioritising staff wellbeing in all that we do. We want to ensure that we create an environment where employees feel supported and can thrive and know where to find resources and help.

We have implemented a Wellbeing Programme which incorporates a calendar of activities to improve mental and physical wellbeing; including Lunch & Learns around topics such as Financial Fitness and physical challenges to not only get the heart rate up but to also raise money for charity.

We have created a Wellbeing hub which is hosted on our intranet, which provides details of our action plan relating to the Mental Health at Work six standards and our constantly evolving approach to wellbeing, a library of resources to provide staff with support information, phone numbers and support charities, HR Policies which support wellbeing, and other tips on staying mentally healthy at work.

To ensure staff have the space to talk and share their concerns, we conduct one-to-one sessions with workers to discuss their wellbeing and support as necessary. We also conduct quarterly engagement surveys to enable workers to feedback on their general wellbeing to inform and shape our future initiatives. We encourage staff to carry out Wellness Action Plans, either independently or in collaboration with their manager to allow them to spot or signpost signs of poor mental health and seek the right support.

We have trained Mental Health First Aiders to support the workforce and ensure we create a more positive workplace culture and removing the stigma around poor mental health. These MHFAs encourage conversation around mental health, recognise those crucial warning signs of mental ill health and feel confident to guide someone to the appropriate support.

For staff based on client site, our established welfare governance processes include distributed Best Practices around Communication, Collaboration and Culture, strengthening our delivery model and ensuring all consultants work to RPS’ Professional Standards, a key element of which is open collaboration. Our goal is to provide the best possible support to allocated resource against RPS led projects for our clients.

Driving forward our Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance strategy and policies continues to be a key focus for Reed Professional Services and we are equally committed to supporting our clients’ social value agendas. We create contract specific Social Value Charters, which will include measurable targets to drive both the commitments that are important to our client, together with other wider social value commitments across our supply chain; both in how we create new partnerships and how we nurture existing ones.